BACKGROUND: Esophageal cancer is a highly aggressive, early metastasis gastrointestinal malignancy, with geographic differences in prognosis. It is unknown whether there are differences in the survival in different regions among esophageal cancer patients who underwent the treatments. This study was to explore the influencing factors of esophageal cancer survival in patients from China and the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. METHODS: The retrospective cohort study were conducted with 605 Chinese esophageal cancer patients in the Wuxi People's Hospital and 2,351 patients from the SEER database. The demographic and clinical data were collected from the two cohort, respectively. The outcome was the death during the follow-up. The follow-up ended on November 30, 2021. The Cox proportional hazards model was used in the univariate and multivariate survival analyses, with hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). RESULTS: In group one, the following were identified as the prognostic factors: female gender (HR =0.568; 95% CI: 0.398-0.811), T3 and T4 stages (HR =3.312; 95% CI: 2.493-4.401), N2 and N3 stages (HR =3.562; 95% CI: 2.631-4.824), and other subtypes of cancer (HR =0.393; 95% CI: 0.223-0.693). The following prognostic were factors identified in group two: age ≥65 years (HR =1.16; 95% CI: 1.058-1.276), female gender (HR =0.843; 95% CI: 0.752-0.945), T3 and T4 stages (HR =1.523; 95% CI: 1.373-1.690), M1 stage (HR =2.554; 95% CI: 2.303-2.832), treatment with surgery and chemotherapy (HR =0.507; 95% CI: 0.457-0.562), and other subtypes of cancer (HR =1.432; 95% CI: 1.298-1.581). CONCLUSIONS: There may be some differences in prognostic factors between Chinese and American patients with esophageal cancer. It is indicated that different management strategies of esophageal cancer should be considered in different populations to improve the prognosis of patients.